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Somebody is eating at the edges of capitalism’s cake

At the DAVOS forum the debate on inequality was hot with academics on one side and business people on the other.

Standing, a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, called for a “new income distribution system,” where governments commit to assuring auniversal basic incomethat would be enough to keep its citizens out of poverty.

A guaranteed basic income is an income not dependent on working or any individual effort or responsibility of any kind.

Tell people often enough that the system is rigged (and you will hear it a lot more) and they will believe it. They may even accept it as justification for their own shortcomings and poor decisions. It is a very effective scapegoat.

Then you tell people higher taxes will somehow unrig the system and with that new revenue the federal government can make your life better.

Then you tell people what more they deserve and are entitled to.

Finally, you convince people that somehow other people, namely the most financially successful otherwise known as wealthy, can foot the bill.

Bingo, problems solved.

As Teddy Roosevelt once said (even while arguing for an inheritance tax back in 1908), We have not the slightest sympathy with that socialistic idea which would try to put laziness, thriftlessness and inefficiency on a par with industry, thrift and efficiency; which would strive to break up not merely private property, but what is far more important, the home, the chief prop upon which our whole civilization stands. Such a theory, if ever adopted, would mean the ruin of the entire country–a ruin which would bear heaviest upon the weakest, upon those least able to shift for themselves.

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For all who want to adopt socialism, I say go ahead. Go ahead. Congress should get to work and create voluntary options for Medicare for all and debt-free college and other socialist-leaning initiatives supported by progressives, socialists, communists and Democrats.

You want Medicare for all? Great, we’ll start collecting taxes for 2019 (to be used in 2020 and future years) as part of a voluntary Medicare program (which won’t lower the taxes they already pay to fund Medicare for today’s beneficiaries). Everyone in that group would forego eligibility for taxpayer subsidies under health reform’s individual marketplace. Then, in 2020, they can create a “Medishare” version of Medicare – spending what has been collected. See how far that goes.

You want no-debt college? Great, we’ll set up a similar fund so individuals can contribute for all who believe America should have no-debt college. Then, in 2020 and future years, people can draw on that “investment”.

Fact is that voluntary doesn’t work when it comes to socialism – you have to take and enforce the taking (a la Social Security, Medicare, etc.)

Some indicate it would “work” with a net over savings above costs of 1.5% of premiums. However, it will only “work” long term if 50% + 1 Americans are, over time, satisfied with the care they received for the cost they pay. Because 10% of Americans incur over 2/3rds of all medical costs in America, in any specific year. So, any universal system will be certain to charge 90+% of Americans more, often dramatically more than the benefits they will receive. In exchange, the 10% receiving the benefits would likely be concentrated among retired individuals and the disabled. So, what we are talking about are taxes that would be dramatically greater than the benefits received for 90+% of Americans. “… the bottom 50 percent (of the American population, ranked by medical spend) accounted for only 2.8 percent of total health care expenditures. Average annual spending in this bottom half of the population was $278.” See: Figure 1 https://meps.ahrq.gov/data_files/publications/st506/stat506.pdf

How to kill such ideas? Send each American a confirmation statement showing the costs incurred for the medical services they received in 2018 and the taxes they would have had to pay under Medicare for All.

Unfortunately, once a Medicare for All system is implemented, it may be very difficult to go back – just look at the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (Health Reform).